uBoot

Koen distribution

LEDs

USR0: heartbeat, driven by the Kernel. However, it is possible for the board to fail to boot yet the heartbeat to continue (for instance the "pixel clock problem").

USR1: MMC IO activity monitor.

SVideo

Getting s-video working is a bit of a black art at the moment. Here is the script that tomba wrote that sets up svideo on fb2 (this requires the latest kernels with DSS2 support, such as the koen distribution).

DSS2A

DSS2 is the display driver that has been virtually rewritten. It includes a sysfs interface at /sys/class/grpahics and /sys/driver/platform/omapdss. See for instance [1] for more info - or just search the google mailing list for DSS2.

I'm fairly sure that mplayer is doing the video scaling in software. If it is possible to get it to use hardware scaling, the results should be msuch better.

Next is to investigate the gstreamer_openmax stuff that reportedly can playback big buck bunny using only 10% of the CPU.

Open Issues

usb ethernet driver is very flaky - falls over after ~30s of heavy xfer or randomly with light usage

need to change keyboard map to UK

Python can't find zlib:

python -c "import zlib"
ImportError: No module named zlib

USN PnP not working - devices only recognised if they are present at boot time

James distribution

James is an alternative build that is being used for the Beagleboard James project. Some developers say it has better display and devices support than the Koen distribution.

NOTE: James is based upon a snapshot of Koen's distribution and is not a separate distribution. Apparently there is some regression along the line. Frankly speaking James is in need of an update, but the author of James is too busy on other issues at the moment.

* I was using a Pluscom 7 port SUB 2.0 hub (U7PH-GL850G) which as the name suggests, is also a Genesys Logic 2xGL850G chipset -based hub, but the power supply failed before I got the beagleboard working correctly.